


The Sarubo Incident

by The Raven Sennin (The_Raven_Sennin)



Series: Team Anko, Final Rev [6]
Category: Naruto, The Sphere (Megacrossover Verse)
Genre: AU, Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Canon is Dead to Us, Fantasy, MagiPunk, Near Full Rewrite, Ninjapunk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 05:31:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5993302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Raven_Sennin/pseuds/The%20Raven%20Sennin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Betrayal. Surprise. Death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sarubo Incident

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rake1810](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rake1810/gifts).



> WARNING: This chapter EARNS the violence warning.

**1548 h. Team Anko's HQ**

"And here we are," Chiaki said. "I'll be sticking around the rest of the day, but Mako has some family matters to sort out and Genta--"

"I can only trust Daigoro not to give in to Daigoyo's jibes for so long. Good apprentice, but..." The sushi-ya shrugged.

"Thanks for the help. Not that I can't handle my own paperwork..." Naruto's brow creased comically.

"Naruto!" Rock Lee called, smiling as he emerged from the back door of the townhouse. "I was hoping you'd turn up in time for a--"

Rock Lee's next words would remain unheard as at that moment the village's general alarm sounded.

Genta's demeanor went from congenial sushi-ya to samurai with a duty in a blink. "Inside. Now."

Naruto didn't question. He'd been through the random drills, and two or three actual incidents that triggered that alarm. The only time he hadn't reported to shelter, he'd killed a man. "Lee," he began.

His sempai was heartbreakingly serious as they let the samurai-trained Seals guide them. "I hope this is just a drill. A real one signals a most Intensely un-Awesome disruption of the Springtime of Youth."

"So do I," Naruto said. But given where he had been earlier, he was very worried it was not.

##

**Main Gate.**

Maruboshi Kosuke did not hesitate on seeing his friends fallen and the Main Gate shattered-- even as he internally winced at the few nin he knew of in town who could shatter iron wood. He lifted his wok (always straped to his back), and taped out a well drilled rhythm on the nearest signal pipe. _Medical emergency, main gate, two down, crash team._

Then he knelt by the two young men who had fallen. Izumo had somehow managed to drag himself beside Kotetsu and was holding the other man's hand. Kotetsu's knees were bent in a direction they shouldn't.

"He did't stop, Sepai," Izumo managed, wheezing. His nose was that smashed up. "He just. Kept. Co'. U'til we could't keep up."

Kosuke winced. The Eternal Genin had been praying, hoping by all Six Paths it was not so-- but it was.

The Endless Assault had betrayed them.

"Kosuke-sempai!"

Kosuke look down. "Inin are on the way, Tetsu-kun--"

"Sempai!" the fallen nin rasped, forcing the words through the pain. "He was heading-- the exact same direction-- he was trying to catch up to the refugee retrieval team! Ibiki's people, Tsume's! A mother and child!"

The wok instantly struck the pipe, harder, faster, but the beat no less by rote.

_Team outside village needs immediate reinforcement._

##

**1555h. Hokage's Ready Room.**

"Inin team dispatched," Ibiki called from the main radio transmitter array. He got there first, so he manned it. One reason Ibiki was one of his best. He really did _anything_ that needed to be done. "We'll be-- hold on. Fuck!"

"Ibiki?" Hiruzen prompted.

"Hokage-sama, the ANBU team you sent to answer Kosuke's second signal has reported in. Kotetsu was convinced Sarubo is making a beeline for the refugee retrieval team we sent out!"

His mind speeding through possibilities, the Sandaime turned to a map of Hi on a nearby table. Enji and Shikaku were standing next to it, Enji manipulating the attached seal array to plot courses. Shikaku looked up at his lord and commander. "That was... north of here. Sarubo's no fool. He was heading that way anyway. So Kumo is a possibility."

"Good terms with Ei, lousy ones with the Daimyo," Enji reflected. "Hokage-sama... he may have been heading to Ta no Kuni as well, and--"

"Yes, Orochimaru was poking around what used to be Oyaigakure and may have been talking to Ta no Kuni's Daimyo," Hiruzen agreed, voice growing cold as he remembered the village leveled for its part in Uzu's fall. "Send out more reinforcements! I'll not have Konoha Nin caught flat footed by one of my student's... 'experiments'!"

"Roger, Hokage-sama!" Ibiki said, and relayed the order over the comm.

Inuzuka Tsume came in, four of her hunters gathered round her. "Hokage-sama!"

"Tsume," the Hokage said, and his voice grew sad. He hated anytime he had to do this. "I regret to inform the oinin that we must transfer the public file of Tani Sarubo, Nin 009960, from our forces... to the Bingo Book."

Tsume blinked at him. "Min-- Minato-sama's teammate?"

The Hokage nodded once, and he felt so very old. Then, his gaze grew fiery, and he knew he was now projecting his Haki. "I do not wish him to be there long, Tsume-chan."

The head of the oinin met his eyes, drawing on the strength and courage of her Kage. "He will be before you in chains as soon as we are able, Sarutobi-sama."

"Good," Hiruzen said, even as he reined his intent in, and held her gaze. “He _fucked_ with _Naruto_ , he turned his strength on _two_ of our most _loyal_ , and has _betrayed the Leaf_ for petty _money_. I want that traitor here to serve _justice_. And if he insists on not returning, **_his head_**."

##

**1555h. Roughly eight klicks north of Konoha's walls.**

Chuunin Sato Shouta was politely relaying what was happening to the woman carrying a toddler in her arms and a guitar on her back... when it all went wrong.

The two T&I members were acting as agents of the Jouhou, Konoha's Intelligence division. The three nin team from the Oinin Butai were there mainly as trackers. Konoha's version of hunters thankfully dodged the secondary nickname of 'Shitai Shori Han' as they more often took their prey alive rather than having to process corpses, and just as often tracked survivors alongside friends from Ame when providing relief to a warzone.

The five nin were expecting bandits, at worst. It was to the credit of Chuunin Koizumi Yuuko that when her senses tweaked, she did not hesitate. It might have been coming from Konoha's direction, but the young oinin trusted her trained reaction to the killing intent she felt.

She managed to survive his initial combination, but in short order Tani Sarubo had gotten behind her, taken head and shoulder in hand, and snapped her neck.

"Lovely day for a walk," Sarubo noted. And it was how mundane his smile was that would chill the survivors. As if he really was just out for an afternoon constitutional.

To their credit, the retrieval team did not hesitate once Sarubo showed his true colours. He did not go through them like a hot knife through butter.

It was more like a Raiton mining jutsu ablating rock over the course of 20 heartbeats.

Tokujou Kita Ryouichi earned his rank by being a shurikenjutsu master. He was able do many of the favourite Uchiha shurikenjutsu 'set pieces' sans sharingan.

He started to worry when Sarubo reacted to a pattern that anticipated dodging by standing still.

The number of shuriken that hit him was still deadly. The renegade nin pulled one shuriken out, smiled at the blood on it, and smeared a line on each cheek. He caught Ryouichi's follow-up fuma shuriken, and used it to gut Chuunin Hyuuga Eri before the T&I nin could close to use her clan's art.

He smiled back at Kita's shocked look, twisted the blade in the Hyuuga's stomach-- then smiled again and made a beeline for the woman and child the team had come for.

Shaking off his shock, Ryouichi moved to join Shouta in standing between the murderer and his target.

The sole remaining oinin, Jounin Rock Tai, managed to close on Tani Sarubo at this point. While not privy to the Arts of the Eight Gates, he had built a style on grappling and crippling that was well respected.

The Rock managed to disarm Sarubo, and rained blows on him that would have left most men and women (nin or not) staggered at the least. When he finally tossed Sarubo into a tree, the Tani proved he was not most by nonchalantly catching a huge falling branch and batting Shouta with it.

The interrogator had been closing with a prisoner tag. When he hit a tree, his spine was shattered.

Again Sarubo made a beeline toward the mother and child. Tai and Ryouichi worked as one, tangling him up to keep him from taking hostages or worse.

The border patrol team that had been alerted to the fight arrived just in time to see Sarubo yank Tai in front of him to take a killing shot from Ryouichi's shuriken. At the stricken look this earned him, Sarubo burst out laughing.

"Oh, Paths!" he chortled. "I didn't even need the shield... but the look on your face-- priceless!"

And then he rolled, picked up the forgotten fuma shuriken, and tossed it directly into the reeling Kita's heart.

He seemed to find the heartrending look on the dying Ryouichi's face worth a chuckle. He turned to the border guards as they closed, and let loose a burst of ki.

Chuunin Wakahisa Aya fell from the treetops dead, a look of horror on her face.

"And that, children, is why sensitive sensors simply must learn to dampen their senses!" Sarubo lectured even as Jounin Shizuka Sachiko and Chuunin Fukioka Yuuka closed on him.

The remaining member of the border team, Tokujou Kazuko, settled herself in defense of the mother and child.

The melee that followed was brutal. Sachiko was a fully certified combat inin, having satisfied the legendary Tsunade's criteria for such. Even as Tani Sarubo unleashed brutal attacks, she healed herself of the result and moved to cripple him.

While he proved resistant to her strikes, he gained an air of annoyance-- especially since their only reaction to him tearing the leg off of Tai's corpse ("Well, corpse for sure, now.") and using it as a club was simply to continue fighting. Yuuka used her Suiton backed swordwork to get strikes in.

Finally with a sigh, Sarubo tossed the leg at Sachiko. Even as she batted it aside, he moved in and captured her in a headlock.

"That's the annoying thing about you inin," he said, giving the woman a nuggie. "You think you can outlast me."

And then he tore her head off with his bare hands.

"To be sure," he explained to her team matter of factly, tossing the head aside as the body fell. Now clad in a mantle of blood, he shrugged.

To their credit, Yuuka and Kazuko did not fly into blind rages on their sensei's death. Kazuko held fast in being the last line of defense, should Yuuka's blade fail.

At first, it seemed Yuuka had the advantage. The extra reach and handling with a blade her element gave her kept Sarubo at bay.

And then he got inside her guard and brandished an ugly little knife.

"There's blood on my hands," the Tani sang as he stabbed the promising kenjutsu specialist repeatedly, "like the blood in you. Some things can't be treated-- so don't make me, don't make me Be. My. Self. A. Round. You!" He punctuated the last four words of the old nin's doggeral with especially vicious stabs, then shrugged and left the knife inside her when he couldn't easily pull it out after the last.

He turned, and approached Kuzuko with a grin, then froze with a confused look.

Kuzuko forced herself to remain in her stance. She was not aware of what was happening, but if it helped her stay true to her nindo and keep her charges alive...

Whatever it was threw Tani Sarubo off long enough for another force to enter the fray.

##

He hit the bastard moving in on a nin from his godfather's village with a brutal body check. His hand reached out and snagged the forehead protector from the man's brow.

Considering what he usually fought, the Hunter wondered briefly if it was overkill.

Then he felt it.

The wretched, horrible gut twist of something that Should Not Be. He'd heard a Sphere's End Mojo call it anti-ka, and his wife's foster father call it Grimm Neart, a Grimm's Violence.

The Hunter banished all guilt. This man was Marked-- and willingly by the feel of it.

His wife was helping the Konoha-nin draw the woman and child that nin had been protecting away, his own daughter safely on her mother's back.

The attacker stood, blinking as if shocked that the check had actually hurt. He scowled as the Hunter held up the disgraced symbol of loyalty.

"Leaf should not attack Leaf," the Hunter said, a truth imparted in his godfather's letters.

The Marked traitor started to smile, made as if heading toward the women and children--

And then he barely dodged the Hunter's Calendar.

Given said Calendar was a stone circle thick as the Hunter's torso and large as a Sphere's End stage coach's wheels, the fact it came back to Gus' hand and he caught it seemed to get the Marked even more nervous.

"Next," the Hunter said, planting the Calendar edgewise on the ground, "I will use my axe and my _grandmother_ 's knife."

And when he pulled that axe and knife, the Marked winced.

"And," the Marked said, "I should give two pieces of nori who your baa-chan is...?"

"These days," the Hunter said with a grin, "she goes by Kuzuki Medea."

The Marked's eyes went even wider. "You-- fuck, you're a _Blake_."

The Hunter adopted the opening armed stance of his grandfather's style-- not that it was all he practiced. As his mother's Sensei had taught her, Anything Went.

"I am August of House Blake, the Horror Hunters, the Rule Breakers, the Mantra and Wolves of Barsaive! I am an ally of Kells' Clan Belladonna! I am the son of Eden of House Blake! I am the stepson of Lukaz, Hero of a Thousand Deaths! I have impressed Khourne in combat! I am the godson of the Mighty Beast, Maito Gai! I am the Keeper of the Grieve! I am your death--"

It was at this point the Marked opted to, as it was said in the kingdom of Kusco the Kind, 'book it'.

Vines began to extend from the Calendar.

"Hold, Grieve," August said.

The vines froze, and retreated. "You are right, young Gus. We have his taste. Now is not for indulging my appetites, when the feast is not certain. Now we should tend to the living and the dead. Shall I fetch Tinder?"

"No," Gus said. "Some Konoha clans bury their dead."

"As you say. We have company, Gus."

Gus collapsed his axe with a snap of his wrist-- bless Keltic weaponsmithing-- and sheathed his knife. He turned, composing himself as a wild-haired woman with markings tattooed on her face landed before him, flanked by a wolf.

"I am Gus of the Bartertown Blakes. Over there is my wife, Akartu, fosterling of Sir Bedivere Belladonna of Kells. I was on my way to see my godfather, Maito Gai. How may I serve his village?"

The woman gave him a considering look. "Who are you again?"

"Blake August. Adept Registration 099436, Bartertown," he stated, seeing where this was going.

"You comfortable living underground there in, er, Bartertown?"

"Depends, how are the native apple trees in Konoha?" he shot back blandly.

The woman laughed back. "All our apples are grown from stock that originally came from imported seeds. Inuzuka Tsume."

"Although the Konoha Sweet is a rather tasty hybrid grown here. The Apple Clan was similarly kind to the Deschains." Gus noted. "And Bartertown is on the surface around the _entrance_ to the underground kingdom of Throal." He gestured to his wife to close in. "My Akartu--"

"You're _Sir_ Bedivere's little girl?" the woman prompted.

"You must have fought alongside _Uncle Bedi_ ," the redhead said, smirking, the cat like ears atop her head twitching. She held up their daughter. "Was it too long ago for him to go on about his poppet?"

The woman smiled at the dark-haired little girl. "And who are you?" she asked, pointedly moving so that she drew the girl's eyes away from the death around them as best she could. He noted a younger woman who could have been Tsume's younger sister or daughter doing much the same with the civilians, aided by three identical dogs.

The girl blushed. "'M Blake."

The woman blinked. Gus snorted.

"Blake is also a common first name in Barsaive and Kells. She uses Belladonna as her family name."

"Ah," Inuzuka said. "Well, this big guy is my partner Kuromaru."

"Hello there, little one," the wolf said. Blake tentatively reached out and stroked his snout, and the one-eyed wolf grinned. The ears atop the little girl's head twitched and she smiled back. "You wanna sit on my back while my human and your parents talk...?"

With a nod from her mother, the little girl was set by the wolf's neck, and she settled there quietly.

"Thank you," Akartu murmured. "Most people assume Blake and I would have trouble with dogs."

The Inuzuka waved her off. "Met enough faunus to know the traits don't make you the animal, anymore than we're our dogs. You get that hitai-ate from the man that did this?"

Gus blinked and looked down to his belt where his 'trophy' from the fight was now tucked.

 _Oh,_ he thought. _so that's where it went._ He untucked it and passed it to Inuzuka. "I would not call that one a man, Inuzuka-sama."

The woman scoffed. "Tsume. And I ain't high enough for the sama, despite what my boyfriend says." She pulled the cloth away from the metal plate's back, scanned it, and cursed.

"Well, that clenches it. His name, nin reg and chop, right there," Tsume sighed.

"Tsume-san," Gus said, getting the woman's attention. "I do not know if my--"

"Gai's mentioned a godson named 'Gus-kun' everytime one of your letters arrives. Loudly, and with great pride," the woman noted wryly, and Gus knew that he was blushing as red as his daughter had.

"Has he... related my calling...?"

Tsume frowned. "Do you think you have something related to that the Hokage should know?"

##

**1610 h.**

Every nin in town felt it when Hana and her triplets returned.

It was in Hana's bearing.

It was in the whimper and moment of pause when one of her hounds was directed to break off and head to the hospital.

It was in the way Hana grabbed a civilian and plunked her to the side out of her path.

It was in the way everything about her screamed not to get in her way, especially not to ask her what the hell was up.

Most of them knew.

The anticipation, the waiting set in.

They all knew there were newly dead among the Leaf's ranks.

They all waited to hear who of Konoha's children were gone.

##

**1625 h. Tani Sarubo's Residence**

"Wait," Rokumine Mina said, holding up a hand.

Her fellow KeiBu-- officers, detectives, and scene of crime workers-- froze in the act of processing Tani Sarubo's basement.

Rokumine was known for grabbing that one detail that everyone missed and pulling the thread until the perp's defenses were a pile of Keltic yarn.

"There were _no_ traps guarding this house," Mina said flatly.

"...fuck," Waduson Atsushi said, palming his eyes.

"That bugs us why, Wadu-kun?" Mina asked in the manner that let everyone know she was getting her partner to give it to them in plain Higo.

"Because, Mina-chan," her partner said, eyes hardening, "not even the most gone-to-seed nin on the planet loses that much paranoia."

Rokumine's own face was grim even as she reached out and took Waduson's hand. "The last nin we've seen in town who did--"

"Was Orochimaru," Waduson continued. "One of the sickest scenes I've ever seen. And before that-- the Bloody Shoot, that killer the capital called us in for help with. Either Tani thinks he's that strong--"

"Or he's leading us to trophies," Rokumine finished, her face hardened into her detached 'reasoning' mask.

"Roku-sempai," one of the Scene of Crime Nin said slowly. "This is a classic Shodai era home, right?"

"Indeed, Akio-kun," Rokumine confirmed, looking at the young man who had rolled up a scroll with some minute trace in it. "A model five, meant for a single nin who may someday have family."

"I haven't paced it out," Matsuoka Akio said, pointing to the back wall, "but there's no way that extends out under the backyard the way this model should. Where's the jutsu and armoury storage? Even if he decommissioned it, the space doesn't just go away."

Rokumine slowly approached the wall and rapped on it. Her eyes went wide at the hollow sound of wood over void.

"There's no earth behind it."

"Someone get me a trap detection and removal team, and an inin crash team just in case!" Waduson shouted.

"Sempai," Inuzuka Ashiko said, closing on the wall herself as her partner whimpered, nose twitching. "We smell blood. _Fresh_ blood. And it's getting stronger. And we can hear.. maybe... wailing...?"

Rokumine's eyes went wide. "Does anyone know any Doton excavation jutsu?"


End file.
